Draper, the philandering chameleon of "Mad Men,’’ exists only in a popular TV series. But Winogrand gained fame as a pioneering street photographer who snapped many thousands of pictures of young, attractive women he glimpsed on streets and beaches, cafes and society gatherings.

Social history and fantasy coalesce in "Winogrand’s Women Are Beautiful,’’ a provocative exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum.

Organized by Nancy Burns, the museum's assistant curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, this intriguing show invites viewers to judge whether Winogrand genuinely documented women’s changing social roles through the 1960s and 1970s or was just a voyeur with a camera.

Mostly young buxom women appear in every photo in this show often wearing low-cut or revealing blouses. They are stretching, dancing, walking, laughing, eating or sunbathing in bikinis.

Burns urged visitors to view Winogrand’s work within the context of a aspiring commercial photographer who reinvented himself as a "serious art photographer’’ whose perceived focus on women has been misunderstood.

"People tend to absolutely love him or have real problems with him. There are few in the middle,’’ she said. "… One of the criticisms of Gary Winogrand is that he exploits the people in his photographs, particularly women.’’

Burns said Winogrand’s admirers often praised his "snapshot aesthetic’’ and off-centered framing – dubbed "the Winogrand tilt’’ – for capturing interesting moments in everyday life. Some feminists, she said, reviled him as a misogynist who "objectified women.’’

After studying painting and photography at Columbia University, Winogrand began roaming New York streets in the early 1950s photographing whatever interested him – mostly women – without permission, just about the time Hugh Hefner was publishing nudie shots of Marilyn Monroe and other top-heavy models in "Playboy.’’

While photographing clothed subjects, Winogrand focused like a laser beam on shapely women, often in revealing or even vulnerable poses.

A pouting blonde beauty in a tight white gown dances in a crowd of older men. Inside a phone booth, a woman whose face is covered by a sign braces herself by lifting a leg, exposing a hint of underwear. In a rare rural shot, a naked woman skinnydips in a lake, seemingly unaware she’s being photographed.

On Wednesday morning, several women reacted viscerally to Winogrand’s photos.

"He’s kind of a jerk,’’ said a Shrewsbury mother who had brought her teenage daughter to the show.

"He was just doing what everyone else did back then and still do,’’ said a woman who described herself as "coming from that generation.’’

Another woman was disturbed by an untitled image from 1972 that revealed the shadow of Winogrand’s head as he photographed a young girl in a bathing suit from behind just as her mother looks toward him with concern.

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"You wonder if he had any daughters,’’ she said, shaking her head.

Burns later observed Winogrand, who was married three times, dedicated the book "Women Are Beautiful’’ to his wife and first daughter.

Drawn from the museum’s collection, "Winogrand’s Women Are Beautiful’’ features 68 of 85 black-and-white images constituting a complete portfolio of a series of photos of the same name taken by Winogrand during the 1960s and early 1970s.

To encourage visitors to consider the breadth of Winogrand’s work, Burns has divided the show into five sections: "Women Are Objects"; "Women Are Fierce"; "Women Are Reflective"; "Women Are Joyful"; and "Women Are More."

In an interview with Bill Moyers, Winogrand described his photos as "mute’’ and without "narrative ability.’’ "I don’t have any storytelling responsibility to what I’m photographing. I have a responsibility to describe it well.’’

It’s a curious statement from a photographer whose images, Burns said, "Ask more questions than they answer.’’

We want to know what’s going on in the 1968 photo of a stylish woman walking bare-breasted through a crowded park. Or, who are they identically dressed women striding past several older men at a park’s edge.

For a man who wielded his Leica camera like a six-shooter, Winogrand was often a master of off-the-cuff composition as in his famous untitled 1964 photo often called "Histrionics on a Bench, World’s Fair, New York City.’’

Burns compared it to Roman frieze for its complexity. A black and white man bookend eight people sitting on a bench in three groups seemingly oblivious to three gossiping women in the middle.

Burns said, it’s "not fair’’ to judge Winogrand on the basis of a series – however notorious – that actually features an eclectic range of images of women.

"He’s not just presenting women as erotic objects. He’s got photos in all directions," she said. "Both are happening. Sometimes you’ve got to divorce the artist from the art.’’

In a short introduction to "Women Are Beautiful,’’ Winogrand wrote: "Whenever I’ve seen an attractive woman, I’ve done my best to photograph her. I don’t know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know the women are beautiful in the photographs.’’

Spoken like a true artist or maybe a chauvinist creep like Don Draper.